Y is for Youth and Yeth Hounds

Y

I hated being a Youth - as in "the youth of today", aka teenaged.  Childhood was interesting, but youth was something that didn't agree with me.  What I really wanted was to hibernate for 7 years, from the ages of 12-19 until I turned back into something recognisably human.  If someone had offered me the option to do so, I'd have taken it, but sadly they did not and I had to take my own measures.

These measures included being paranoid, anti-social and cultivating a yak-type hairstyle which still stands me in good stead.  The upside was that since I isolated myself very effectively from my peers, I had a lot of time on my hands and read obsessively.  Bear in mind that I am still incapable of going anywhere without at least two paperbacks stashed in my handbag.  At that stage of my life, I read while walking down the road.  Myths, legends and  fantasy were my areas of choice, and this is where the Yeth Hounds come in.

Illustration by Anne-Marie Perks

Several other A-Zers have dealt with the Wild Hunt of which the Yeth Hounds form such an important part.  Also known as Yell Hounds and Gabriel Hounds, they appear in a number of northern mythologies.  I haven't found any southern instances, but they may exist.

The origins of the hounds possibly lie in flocks of migrating geese.  Human imagination has turned that eerie sound into spectral hounds.  They cannot be turned aside.  If they catch your scent, they will run you down and there is no escape.  Lean white hounds, with baleful eyes and red ears, they race across the autumn and winter skies, led variously by the devil, Herne and Odin.  Typically the hunt is not evil.  It can be summoned for a purpose however, and as a neutral force, will obey a sufficiently powerful caller whether good or bad.

I've got to admit that the first time I read about the hounds, I stayed awake all night jumping at shadows and fleeing under my duvet at all the night sounds I'd never noticed before.  They still terrify me.  Now however, I'm more interested in them for the way they keep popping up in mythology and I'm still curious about why they should be such a northern phenomenon.

All that self-imposed isolation meant that I at least emerged from my teenage years very widely read indeed.  Completely lacking in social skills mind you.  Which may have contributed to my disasterous start in the romance game.

All this is a very long time ago now, but the me that emerged from the youth-phase is still the me I wake up with.  Most of the basic obsessions were in place and while some of them have mellowed, others have evolved and grown deeper.  Maybe the hounds got me after all.  Some things can't be escaped.

T is for Traveling with G and why Delta Airlines is forever on my Christmas card list

T

(A true story for the letter T)

I have fleetingly mentioned spending a lot of time in the US travelling when I was a child.  In a reversal on the usual procedure, my role was often to look after my father.  He was spectacularly eccentric and my mother deemed me a proper person to make sure he got to places on time.  She had done it for many years and felt that her 12 year old daughter would make a decent substitute.  Or something.  I've never known quite what her reasoning was.

However it came about, G and I found ourselves going on a jaunt to Mexico via San Francisco before heading to New York to catch a flight home to England.  Ever practical, mum made sure that I was the person looking after passports, visas and flight tickets.  "Make sure you tell your father the flight is two hours earlier than it is." was her parting advice as she saw us off.

It was well-intended advice.  G habitually ran late everywhere and his notion of comfortable travel consisted of drinking half a bottle of wine, swallowing a nembutal and crashing out in a cacophonous snoring heap until the flight landed.  Minor details like knowing where we were supposed to be staying he could deal with, but airports did not bring out the best in him.

G and I liked travelling together.  I didn't mind the snoring and rather enjoyed whimsical side-treks to wherever took his fancy.  He let me stay up late and was unfussed by my desire to live entirely off Pepperidge Farm cookies.  It was a win-win as far as we were concerned.  Stage one went very smoothly.  Atlanta to San Francisco was a complete success.  I went with him to whatever lab it was he was supposed to visit and cheerfully broke some software.  We went to see Godspell.  We ate some nice meals and looked at San Francisco which I adored and have never visited since.  Onwards to the airport for the journey to Mexico.

Following mum's advice, I managed to get G awake enough to arrive at the airport comfortably early.  I was so proud of myself.  He wandered off to the bar while I book browsed and we met up to have some lunch.  Over which he announced that he had taken his pre-flight nembutal.  Two hours early.  This was not good news.  Oh how my sensible lie had come back to bite me in the bum. 

Working our way down the marathon walkways of San Francisco airport, we duly arrived at the departure gate and I took my eyes of an obviously rather woozy G to make sure we had the relevant tickets.  When I looked around again, he had vanished.  He stayed vanished.  The flight was called.  He was still vanished.  I could only think of one solution.  He must have gone to the Gents and the nembutal had kicked in.  By now, I was the only person at the departure gate and announcements were blaring all over the airport demanding that Professor Pask present himself immediately. 

Major panic ensued.  I was not going to investigate the Gents by myself.  Masterminding my father was one thing, but that was way out of my remit.  I got on the flight and demanded to see the captain.  Where I explained that my father had probably passed out in the Gents and could they possibly go and get him for me.  To the infinite credit of Delta Airlines, they did just that.  I've been grateful to them ever since.

This, of course, was before we got trapped at Mexico airport when we discovered that my visa had expired.  Same journey, but another story.

Trawling the blogs and finding hamsters

In preparation for the A-Z challenge I did a small amount of blog crawling yesterday.

Starting with myself, I just worked my way through as many blogs as I could.  Got to number 300 and discovered some truly fascinating niche markets on the way.

Hamsters.  Who knew?  There is a rich seam of material for lovers of small rodents out there.


Inky the hamster mommy
Animal Tails
Confessions of a hamsterholic

As a former rodent owner, I can empathise.  When I was small, we had a long succession of hamtsers, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs and mice. 

Scamper the hamster was inappropriately named.  She was vast and did nothing but sleep.  When doing neither, she bit people.  She attempted to lumber her way to freedom when my sister put her on the sofa and wandered off.  With most hamsters, that  would have been more than enough time to stage an escape, but Scamper's size and disinclination to move far or fast made it easy to recapture her.  The ensuing lecture on keeping pets safe was met with a blank stare.  "You mean most hamsters aren't like this?"

You have to remember that at this point our only connection with rodents as a family had been via Tales of the Riverbank and Hammy the Hamster.  He was also not very representative.

Hammy Hamster's bijou riverside cottage

Later excursions brought us to guinea pigs, via Olga da Polga.

Here, as it turned out, fiction got it right.  Olga had much in common with Blanche and Josephine.  They were a chatty pair, extremely friendly and much the most personality packed of our childhood rodents.  

Since we are currently the possessions of a 16 year old cat who regards it as her duty to rid the world of anything small and squeaky, we don't have any rodents at the moment.  Unless I can finally fulfil that childhood dream and own a capybara.